Around June 27, 1857

In October of 1851, nine Baptist churches in Appalachia came together to form an association. The Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Association began with nine churches: Stony Creek, Copper Creek, Three Forks Powells River, Moccasin Creek, Blue Spring, Red Hill, Tom's Creek, Big Glade and Crane's Nest. By 1854, the association had grown to 11 churches, with Little Stonegap and MC Cluse as the...

Hinton R. Helper, a southerner, publishes his book entitled The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It. Helper champions the nonslaveholding Southern whites while denouncing Southern slave masters as lords of the lash.' Helper concluded that slavery was impeding the South's economic, social, and cultural development. Using the 1850 census, Helper used demographic statistics...

In July of 1857, Chicago’s “Charley H.” was the topic of an article in the Tribune. The article described his as a “hard-working clerk who lived in a boarding house.” The article reveals, however, Charley is actually a female-bodied person who dressed and acted like a man. The acquaintances of Charley H. were astonished that “Charley was a woman, yes a veritable woman in man’s...

John Andrew Jackson was a slave living under the lash in Sumter County, South Carolina. After years of servitude, Jackson fled slavery when he was separated by sale from his wife and child in 1846. Jackson worked briefly in Charleston, South Carolina before he stowed away on a vessel bound for Boston, Massachusetts. He settled in Salem and worked part-time as a sawmill operative and leather tanner....

The hate crime that occurred in Louisville, Kentucky, on May 20, 1857, was "one of the most shocking instances of cruelty and of mob violence that has transpired in this country for years." A group of slaves from Louisville had been accused of a crime. A white jury found the slaves not guilty, which angered a mob of whites who wanted the slaves executed for a crime that they clearly did not commit....

It was the fall of 1855; Bethany College in Bethany, Virginia had been in session for only a few weeks when an incident shattered the equanimity of the student population. Five northern students were dismissed for trying to introduce their Abolitionism into the college, into its literary societies, and into the church, according to the college president and founder, famed Restoration minister Alexander...

Historian Frederick Turner once described the frontier as "the meeting point between savagery and civilization." On the journey out west, wagons were pillaged by Native Americans who stole animals and destroyed necessities, seeking revenge for the intrusion up their land. Westward travelers saw their destinations as safe havens; however, the troubles did not end when their journey did. As each party...

The servants thought the new bride, Mrs. Nancy Gray, had simply laid down to rest. Though shutting up the house on a Thursday morning was an unusual step, she had felt indisposed recently and so they thought nothing of it. It was not until the middle of the day, when a serving woman came to ask about dinner, that they realized something was amiss. Nancy Gray was not asleep; she was found in a closet,...

The United States Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, but there were some who still took part in the slave trade, knowing it was illegal. Some southerners even talked about reviving the slave trade in the mid-1850s, but most Americans opposed this idea, and numerous slave smugglers were put on trial in the United States. According to the New York Herald, "the United States...